Home, let the gullibility and narcissism

Lie flat inside us as if we were the lost

Generation in search a direct, unadorned

Sentence, a minute of skill that we both

Know is the opposite of trust. It is anguish

We know but barely understand or interpret

As elation. We sit in a dive, on Abbot Kinney

Before the elites took over and stopped the

Gangs and shootings, ferreting out the bad

Elements as they are called with another term

Named gentrification. It is with elation we

Are matched up and optimistic in this

Frame we steal, right before adult life

Is supposed to begin, before we stop

Being on holiday, drinking mint tea,

A gang of wayward writers, getting

Into other people’s business without

Knowing why. We laugh because

The stop watch has not tripped yet.

Because hunger allows us no choice,

Because failing to meet expectations is not a crime.

Moving from one point to another, we all know

We are not being as good as people say

We are. A pack of fools spending pocket money

And hours foolishly. For a brief moment,

We dismiss how things are going only to

Push aside our attempts to scatter and examine

Until later. Fall days are uneven and sparse.

We discuss and enforce our crime-imagined belief

System, at an age when anything is still possible.